muji and lego

this is something cool from two cool brands, muji and lego!!! i never thought that you could add a layer of paper to lego bricks in this manner. idea for my toy?

http://www.muji.net/store/pc/user/campaign/campaign091113_01.jsp

Constructive play is another type of play in which children love to build and create. Not only do children play with blocks and build structures, but they develop fine motor skills and self-esteem through artwork.

http://www.toyassociation.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=TINFO_Stages_of_Play1&Template=/TaggedPage/TaggedPageDisplay.cfm&TPLID=112&ContentID=1880

self esteem can be doubly developed when that piece you build produces the sound that you want?

Creative Play is what children do when they are just being children, and there are plenty of things you can do to encourage creative play in your home. Whether it is drawing, painting, cutting, pasting, modelling or making, all children love being creative if they are given the chance, and the act of being creative brings with it so many benefits.

http://www.kiwifamilies.co.nz/Topics/Toys/Benefits+of+Creative+Play.html

making sounds too. making sounds is often neglected as a form of creative play.

Four year old's can do the dishes and fold clothes as well us!

I let my 4 year old daughter stand on a chair and ''wash'' the plastic dishes and silverware. She really feels as if she is doing something impotant for me by helping and thinks it's fun. She also helps me fold towels and washcloths. For strength in her hands, I usually find a play-dough activity to help build muscle in her hands.(Lego's are great, too!) Good technique! They really feel important doing these ''job's'' and it improves their motor skills. My son is 10 and he absolutley loves lego's and has started a collection. He can build just about anything he imagines (cars, spacesip, star wars men, ect.). I believe ''hands-on'' jobs and things like like lego's help strenghten your mind and body by use of movement, thinking strategies and creativity.It beats video games!No offense to playing video games but finding hands-on projects minimizes so much time with the t.v.Thanks for the chance to win! My kids would love more legos!

http://www.blogher.com/duplo-spon-disc

Children are born designers

Designing and Redesigning LEGO Games

All LEGO Games are designed to be designed. The board is built out of LEGO pieces that can be assembled and reassembled into countless configurations. Each face of the LEGO dice can be changed, its functions endlessly redefined. Even the rules are written so that they are not only clear, but easy to change.

Designing a new variation is as much a part of the LEGO Game experience as playing it. Children are designers

Children are born designers. They design dances and music, they paint with food and build with cups, they play whenever, when they are by themselves or with us, sometimes even despite us.

They don’t have to be taught how to design a game. They can create a game out of anything.
But, like all things children do anyway, given the companionship of an adult, the permission and the tools, children will learn how to make even better games, even more beautiful art.

So this is written for adults, specifically for parents. Your children won’t need your help. But they might want it. And when they do, this article will help you understand a little more clearly what they are about, share the adventure of making something fun, and make your wisdom and love a little more available to them.

Think of it as playing together, you and your child. Not only playing a game, but playing with the game, to see what you can make of it together.

Why games?
Given dance, art, music, and all the other amazing gifts of childhood, for adults, children’s ability to design games is probably one of the least appreciated. It’s one of those things that kids do that amuse us, but, more importantly, amuse them. When we see our ha busily engaged in making up their own games, we generally let well-enough alone. They’re happy. They’re occupied. And as long as they are, we can get on with all the other significant adult activities we have become heir to.

Art, music, dance, these we recognize as “important” activities, valuable, directly impacting our children’s growth. Games, not so much.

On the other hand, the skills that our children learn to master in the process of making-up games are as basic to their development as reasoning, as the scientific method, as discovering how to make and keep friends, as learning about system dynamics and systematic thinking, as understanding rules, fairness, reciprocity, as the practice of kindness and empathy.

http://games.lego.com/en-gb/parents/parentsguide/default.aspx?id=Designing%20Redesigning%20part%201

Some research

Development skills
http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/talktoyourbaby/play.html#playingitup
Child development falls into the two main categories of physical and neurological. Physical skills involve both gross motor skills such as rolling over, crawling and walking, and fine motor skills such as hand-eye coordination, grasping objects, drawing and later writing. Sensory development is also physical and includes sight, sound, touch, smell and taste. Intellectual and cognitive development centre on activity in the brain including use of language, smiling and giggling, imagination and working out. Our children's emotional wellbeing also develops in the brain and comprises many areas such as self awareness, self esteem and the ability to interact with others. Playing in some form or another helps to refine these different areas of development in babies and young children.

toys are simply the best
http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/talktoyourbaby/play.html#simply
Traditional building blocks and Play-Doh are far better for children's learning than high-tech educational toys and videos, experts have revealed. Psychologists are warning that many expensive games might actually restrict children's progress by stifling their creativity and hindering their social skills. American child development expert Professor Kathy Hirsh-Pasek believes youngsters spend too long in front of television and computer screens when they could be playing with basic toys. In a new book titled Einstein Never Used Flash Cards, she claims that so-called 'smart' toys fail to teach children to play imaginatively.

Crit on 28th Oct

Matrix

So what i did was to put these products in the previous posts in a matrix with the axes "electrical-physical" and "simple skills-advanced skills" and i realised there is a gap over there at the physical toys requiring more advanced skills, which was what i had set out to do anyway. i'm fine with using electrical parts actually just that they have to applied in a useful and meaningful way. We'll see how it goes.

Existing Solutions

Sound Cylinders

Kids are supposed to match the red cylinder with the blue cylinder which produces identical sound. A new form of pairing game but i guess it can get pretty boring for a while unless the kids are rather young. i like the form though.

Musini

This is similar to Sound Candy below. The sensors in this toy can pick up vibration from the movement of kids and translate them into sounds of different styles.

AMK

Modular sound blocks targeted at preschool kids. Each module can play different sounds.

Loss Proof Sounding Ball

This ball will sound when it is still and will become silent when it is in motion. i feel that this has the potential to be quite an irritating toy.

Boomwhackers

Each tube plays a note. Made of tough and colourful plastic. i feel that they are more like instruments rather than toys, though it's definitely an easy instrument to pick up and is extremly fun especially when played in a group. And you can use them to play your compositions, like this amazing group of people playing Bumblebee with Boomwhackers.

Rainbow Sound Blocks

Wooden shapes with a window containing beads of different types and they can be fitted within the frame.

Sound Candy

This is rather cool. This furry device can record sounds and then play back this recorded sound in different forms when in different modes as a response to the signals from the sensors. The sensors in it are sensitive to vibrations and accelerations from movements.

Light and Sound Funky Footprints

Simple toy, most probably for toddlers. As the name suggests, the kid is supposed to step on the footprints which produces light and sound when you step on them and the aim is to reach the end. i guess this is useful as a kind of motivation for kids when they are learning to walk.

Neurosmith Music Blocks

Neurosmith is apparently a reputable company when it comes to toys. So this product allows the kids to compose music with the blocks and at the same time experimenting with the colours, shapes and sequences.

Playground @ Pasir Ris Park

There's a sonic playground at Pasir Ris Park too but this one is quite different from that at One North.

This one is not that educational and basically just offers the kids a chance to play or rather make some noise with these bells and drums.
And the playground is mostly made of plastic, which is vastly different from that at One North. But this doesn't offer much and it seems that kids are bored by it after a while.
i feel that the playground here is a bit static and kids dun have a sustained interest in what is offered here.
i used to be afraid of climbing this spiderweb. Being a spiderweb means that the whole thing is kind of inter-connected and one kid jumping vigourously on it can make everyone panic.
A bridge made of rubber which means jumping on it can cause quite a bit of reaction to the whole bridge. It looks really simple but it can be really exciting.
The merry-go-round for the current young generation. You know it'll be fun just by looking at it.
A some sort of course-based playground. Kids can set just a simple rule of "not touching the ground" and have endless hours of fun on it, speaking from experience that is.

Playgrounds that are more popular among the kids are those that offer more excitement and those that they can enjoy with their companions.

tapTap

tapTap from Andy Huntington on Vimeo.

Pretty amazing toy that i'll love to own. Each box has its own memory, enabling playback of rhythm. It's fun and interactive and can most probably keep one entertained for a long time. But it's not so much of sound exploration though. i'll like to see how it will sound like when they are stacked in one big pyramid.

http://extraversion.co.uk/2004/taptap/

Sonic Playground @ One-North

So i went to this sonic playground at One-North at Buona Vista. The playground is actually part of a more conventional playground situated in a park like environment within this mega research centre. As can be seen in the picture, there are kids from a child care centre playing at the playground but none of them are actually playing with the sonic playthings. So why is that the case?

There are a total of 3 sonic facilities over there, namely 1. telephone tubes, 2. communal drum and 3. parabolic dish.
The telephone tubes has a pretty simple concept. If you speak at one end of the blue tube, the other party at the other end of the blue tube would be able to hear you even though you are a distance away, and that is the similar case for the red tubes. This is because the sound waves are able to travel through the tubes. I have actually seen this telephone tubes at a playground in Hougang before.
This pic above shows the communal drums. As can be seen, the seat and the drum are made of highly reflective metal. The table and the seats are hollow so they produce sounds like a drum when it is hit. The aim of this drum is for kids to create their own rhythms together. It was a sunny afternoon when i was at the playground and naturally this whole set of metal drums was hot to the touch, which most probably explains why no one was playing with it.

The parabolic dishes are huge but the instructions on how to play with it is not very clear, at least to me. i didn't get the instructions although when i tried it, it was obvious that the dishes amplify the sounds that i've made when i was between them.

From http://www.one-north.sg/playground.aspx,

These interactive equipments can make and manipulate sounds which demonstrate acoustics, science, and physics and also promote cognitive development through manipulation, experimentation and imagination.

Some benefits of these equipments as follow:

-Besides being an interactive sonic equipment, it introduces the beauty of sculpture as the forms are unique;

-It encourages group activities which could promotes team building, cooperation and coordination among their peers; and

-Children can experiment the behavior of the sound by playing it in different ways;

i'm not so sure about what is the age range of the target users for the sonic playground but i feel that the playground is not very intuitive, so that was why nobody was playing with it when i was there and the instructions are definitely too difficult for the kindergarten kids to understand.